Diversification is a fundamental concept in economics, decision theory, and finance, but the way in which it is implemented in the real world varies greatly. This paper asks how elementary the notion of diversification is by studying whether children apply it as a choice heuristic. We report on...

This paper studies how hyperbolic discounting affects stock market participation, asset allocation, and saving decisions over the life cycle in an economy with Epstein-Zin preferences. Hyperbolic discounting affects saving and portfolio decisions through at least two channels: (1) it lowers...

Households face earnings risk which is non-normal and varies by age and over the income distribution. We show that, in the context of a structurally estimated life-cycle portfolio choice model, allowing for these rich features of earnings dynamics helps to better understand the limited...

This paper applies the methods of Detemple, Garcia, and Rindisbacher (2003, 2005) and derives explicit optimal lifetime consumption-portfolio plans in an economy whose fixed-income sector is characterized by an N-factor Heath-Jarrow-Morton (1992) model that is Markovian in 3N state variables

This paper characterizes optimal consumption and investment policies for investors with asset return predictability, stochastic labor income and endogenously-determined retirement. We find that the ratio of total wealth-to-labor income (normalized wealth) is the primary determinant of the...

It is well known that the implicit insurance provided by labor income taxes can reduce total saving. We show that this insurance can change the composition of saving as well because the reduction in labor-income risk may affect the amount of financial risk that an individual chooses to bear....

Three concepts: stochastic discount factors, multi-beta pricing and mean-variance efficiency, are at the core of modern empirical asset pricing. This chapter reviews these paradigms and the relations among them, concentrating on conditional asset-pricing models where lagged variables serve as...

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Survey, we reveal the non-linear dependence, between-squares correlation, between stock returns and earning risk exists. To understand how this non-linear dependence affects household life-cycle profile, we develop a life-cycle model that incorporates...

This paper investigates retirees' optimal purchases of fixed and variable longevity income annuities using their defined contribution (DC) plan assets and given their expected Social Security benefits. As an alternative, we also evaluate using plan assets to boost Social Security benefits...